"But I do not believe," she added, "that my Lord will let me be brought so low that I shall lack help of God and miracle."
"If you dress as you do by God's command," they asked her, "why do you ask for a shift in the hour of death?"
"It suffices me that it should be long!" said the girl.
All this was but the preliminary inquiry. Now followed a week of respite, while the evidence was sifted and arranged, and articles of indictment drawn up. On March 27th Joan was summoned to hear her formal accusation, conveyed in seventy articles. The Court was asked to declare her "a sorceress, a divineress, a false prophet, one who invoked evil spirits, a witch, a heretic, an apostate, a seditious blasphemer, rejoicing in blood, indecent," and I know not what else beside. These seventy articles were presently condensed into twelve. On April 6th the learned doctors were called to deliberate on these twelve, which constituted the real accusation, by which the captive must live or die.
They met in the private chapel of the Archbishop, which is still standing, in the courtyard hard by the cathedral. The articles were duly accepted, and the Maid was summoned to hear the result. But she lay ill in her prison, worn out with fasting and misery. Cauchon himself came to visit her, professing himself full of tender solicitude for her soul and body. He bade her note how kind they were to her. They desired only her welfare; the Holy Church was ever ready to receive its erring children, etc., etc. With her unfailing courtesy Joan thanked him. She thought herself in danger of death; she begged for confession and the sacrament, and burial in holy ground.
"If you desire the Holy Sacrament," said Cauchon, "you must submit to Holy Church."
The girl turned her head wearily on her pallet. "I can say no more than I have said!" was her only word.
But the Bishop pressed on relentless. The more she feared for her life, he told her, the more she would resolve to amend it, and submit to those above her. Then she said:
"If my body dies in prison I expect from you burial in holy ground; if you do not give it, I await upon my Lord." And as they still tormented her: